We just implemented a quota on the # of jobs that a Provider can apply to in a week. Providers used to be apply to apply to an unlimited # of jobs. Now the # is capped at 10 per week.

Check out why we made this change in our Community, and let us know what you think.

Everyone at oDesk has the Google Desktop installed on their computers. It is a good way to search through the piles of emails and months old documents. No need for cleanly organized folders anymore, it is much easier and quicker to search with Google Desktop.

Most of us have the Desktop enabled as a Sidebar. Cool thing is that developers can create plug-ins for the Google Desktop Sidebar (not good news for Konfabulator, now acquired by Yahoo, that was creating Apple-style widgets for PCs). Naturally, the extension of that is to create oDesk plug-ins for the Google Desktop Sidebar. One of the first to come out is the oDesk MiniCamGD (version 1.0.4 can be downloaded here). This integrated into the Sidebar as a minicam window, resizing automatically, and when you click on it, it opens into a full resolution webcam shot. Take a look at my ScreenSnap.

It also integrates with oDesk Team, i.e. if you are running the MiniCamGD, it will not restrict your webcam from uploading your picture with the Work Diary. You can pause it by pressing (CTRL + ALT + P). More options and preferences can be accessed by right-clicking on the webcam picture area.
Before you go crazy… let me tell you that there is NO support for this plug-in, NO guarantees that it will work, and oDesk takes NO responsibility if the MiniCamGD plug-in makes your entire Sidebar go kaput.

Now, you may go crazy. Oh, and please do leave comments about what other plug-ins would be cool-to-have.

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Abid

Skype now offers free calls within the US and Canada.
This doesn’t really help our international providers, but it is interesting for all oDesk users in North America. Now Skype calls make sense if the laptop is closer than your cell phone…

We at oDesk love to serve entrepreneurs. Many oDesk buyers are entrepreneurs, building companies with far-flung teams of talented oDesk providers. As they take their products to market, they’d do well to heed the advice of Joe Kraus, CEO of JotSpot. He makes some great points about how entepreneurs building enterprise applications have a lot to learn from the consumer internet model.
As an aside, we use Jot as a wiki internally. We think it is a great product, though we’d love to see them improve the WYSIWIG editor and add gmail-style autosaving of drafts.

At oDesk, we work with offshore teams as a matter of course. The issue we continually face is how do you manage and measure the performance of your remote team. Sure, screenshots of what they are doing gives you a sense of what they are working on but it is hard to talk to their co-workers, peers, etc.

With most local teams you can set a series of milestones and checkpoints and manage to those deliverables. With a remote team, that becomes problematic due to the distance and lack of regular visibility into their work. Many software development shops keep a staff of programmers/QA onsite to review all code checked in and bugs reported by the remote team. While this level of management works, the reality is that many small companies who wish to offshore do not have programming expertise onsite.

To maximize the working relationships we have, here are a few of the things we believe are key to a successful outcome.

Communication:

First and foremost is communication. If you are not constantly in the loop with your offshore team, you are out of the loop. And with a team 8k-10k miles away, being out of the loop is not good for business.

At oDesk, we utilize several modes of communication. Email, IM chat, Skype Voice and IM Chat conference. We keep a Skype chat conference open and active during the hours we share with our offshore QA team as a open line of communication. It is amazing how freely information began flowing once we started that. I can come in and review the chat of the previous 2-3 hours and see any issues and how/if they were resolved. Our teams use Skype voice chat several hours per day. In fact there have been active Skype voice calls lasting several hours.

Assigning Tasks:

Having clearly defined tasks in key in managing remote teams. We assign tasks via Bugzilla for writing/updating automated testing scripts, regression testing, and back end api testing. These tasks are then broken down to their components and assigned to individual QA Engineers. Once a task is complete it is marked as resolved, and checked into SVN. (if applicable)

Metrics:

We have also determined that the standard metrics of test case writing, defect reporting and management, as well as the updating of the automated testing scripts offer us a good place to start.

We track metrics such as:

• Defects logged per hour of testing
• Test Cases written/modified per week
• Ratio of valid vs. invalid Defects

Using these metrics not only gives us a peek into the quantity but also the quality of work vis a vie auditing defects, and test cases.
We also keep track of test case files by requiring them to be checked into SVN. This allows us to track progress on the file from revision to revision. It also gives us the ability to do forensic work if we think we missed a very obvious bug or a feature was added that was not covered in a test case.

Inclusion:

We include representatives from our offshore teams in our local Engineering meetings. This gives them the chance to interact with the team, make suggestions, and participate in the decision making process. This has the effect of making them a real part of the team and it shows in how they respond to the job at hand.

Conclusion:

This is just a few of the things we do but there is one underlying theme. Visibility breeds accountability. It also let’s people know you are not just interested in getting your project done, but also in helping them be more successful.

For more info on this and other QA/Project Management related issues check out:

http://www.stickyminds.com

http://qaforums.com

The blogosphere is humming…with tips to help providers succeed in the world of remote work.

Mobcode offers advice on when to apply to jobs.

He also offers nice interview tips. Buyers can check the list to see what they should be asking.

For the record, here is oDesk’s interview advice for buyers and providers.

What do you guys think of Mobcode’s advice?

For the past few years, my ultimate invention candidate has been the Star Trek Transporter (illustrated on left).

“Energize!”, and you can go anywhere anytime. (My previous candidate was the Star Trek Replicator, to get my chocolate shake anywhere anytime). Why? Because the best places to work are not necessarily the best places to live (due to cost of living, deminished social life, being away from family and friends).

A lot of people end up living in foreign countries to pursue the career they want (e.g. me) and it’s not easy to spend time with your family (who live in Pakistan and the UK). Skype and Gmail allow us to remain in touch, but they don’t allow me to play with my nephew (picture on right).

I have a good friend whose main goal is to find a career where he can travel back and forth between Pakistan and the US, while not sacrificing the big bucks (he was working as a top programmer for a US company). He started a small outfit in Pakistan and was looking to get them some programming work. Naturally, I got him into oDesk as an Affiliate. He fairly quickly got a $100K+ project, quit his regular job in the US, and is now full-time involved as the Affiliate Manager.

Let me first outline some tips I got from him:

• He found job openings where his skill set was relevant (don’t blindly apply to everything)
• He applied himself, and also had his Providers apply at the same time (so they appeared together in the Candidate List)
• He clearly outlined who he was (Affiliate Manager), who else was in his team (Providers), links to the oDesk Profiles of his Providers (use oDesk Short URLs in the cover letter), and why they were good for the job
• He had a US number where he could be reached during his business hours (you can either get a VoIP box from Vonics or Vonage, or get a SkypeIn account)

But the cool thing for me was that oDesk helped him achieve his equivalent of the Star Trek Transporter. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, has gone to his oDesk Buyer’s offices in Texas, and spends time with him family in Pakistan while overseeing his (growing) Affiliate outfit. You could argue that it’s better than the Star Trek Transporter. Captain Kirk always worked with the same people on his ship, and actually lost a few people in every episode (the poor Red Shirts). They should have just enjoyed their chocolate shakes in interstellar space and talked to the Klingons over Yahoo IM.

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Abid

As a software developer who enjoys solving problems, I’m always thinking about how we can use technology to address the problems of transparency, visibility, and open and honest communication with respect to remote work. These are real problems with non-obvious solutions. As our users know, we are continually pushing ourselves to innovate and deliver the tools and information to make your work through oDesk as successful as possible. You’ll see more product-related enhancements in the coming months around the theme of deep visibility into oDesk marketplace trends; enhancements that I think really set us apart as a product and as a company.

But as this article on eWeek.com points out, there are some relatively simple things that remote workers can do to help themselves succeed. As someone who has been on both sides of the remote work equation, here are my top five suggestions that I’ve found make a big difference:

1. Use VoIP. Social disconnection is a real problem. Email is great for asynchronous work, and IM is something many remote workers can’t live without, but both are cold and impersonal. To really be integrated into a company, sometimes you just need to hear and be heard. Use Skype or Google Talk, and make sure everyone you work with does too.
2. Set your own hours. And keep them. Be consistent in your working hours, and make sure you have at least a few hours of overlap with your team every day. If you’re working, be connected to your IM account(s) and set your status appropriately. If you’re using oDesk Team, use a webcam. This will help cement your ‘presence’ in your colleagues’ minds, and in the company. Don’t make people have to hunt you down.
3. Eliminate distractions. As the eWeek article points out, working from home can be liberating. Still, there are can be advantages to an office environment, most notably, a lack of distractions such as kids, pets, TV, etc. Try to designate one room as a home office. Keep the door closed and the kids/pets out while you’re working. If having background noise such as music or TV helps you get in ‘the zone’ and makes you more productive, use it. Otherwise, cut it.
4. Be comfortable. Having worked until 2 AM far too many nights in our CTO’s home office (a converted guest bedroom), where the ambient temperature averaged 55 degrees F, and the chairs were the folding type with metal legs, I can say with confidence that being uncomfortable does hurt productivity. I’ve always been amazed by how many friends of mine, also software developers, have no problem dropping $1000+ for the leather seating option on their new car, but balk at spending a few hundred on a good chair from a vendor like Steelcase or Herman Miller. If you spend more time on a daily basis in your office chair than in your car, and I’m pretty sure most people do, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
5. Care about your craft. If you don’t care about the product you’re working on or the company you’re working for, it becomes apparent pretty fast. Companies know that finding reliable remote workers has traditionally been a hard problem. Little things like following up, and being honest and driven show you care, and can pay long-term dividends. Along these lines, oDesk is doing what we can to ensure our marketplace showcases the best talent and most committed workers. oDesk Hours Worked, Feedback, and Online Testing are all examples of oDesk metrics that help you rise above the rest.

Community is at the heart of oDesk. So we thought you would like to know that we have caused quite some discussion since our launch last week.

We’ve been picked up in the blogosphere- for example, here and here. Mashable, on of the highly regarded blogs covering Web 2.0, has dubbed us Rent a Coder 2.0. We’re still mulling over the moniker. There is also quite some back and forth about oDesk and the challenges of remote development.

Meanwhile, our Business Week profile seems to be generating debate about the merits of outsourcing. Some see offshore development as ineffective and bad for American jobs. The other camp sees oDesk as an innovative company pioneering free markets and transparency.

(Though the debates don’t totally miss each other. At the Mashable blog, an American programmer says he doesn’t feel threatened by globalization and looks forward to oDesk.)

As always, we encourage our community to participate and share their candid thoughts on these interesting topics.

Notable tech blog alarm:clock carried an item on our funding yesterday. There is a quick summary of the funding news and a bit about oDesk.

alarm:clock is a great blog featuring the latest in the tech businesses. We check it regularly.